The good news is that I finished drafting Part I of my book in Chicago, just a few days after Thanksgiving. I was sitting at my cousins’ dining room table, dance music blasting in my headphones, writing longhand in the notebook I’ve been drafting the book in this year. A giant snowstorm was beginning to blanket the whole region in sculptural white fluff. (The next day we made a snowman.) It was a great, cozy, victorious morning. The bad news is that, since then, I’ve been a bit stuck. I’m bogged down by big-picture questions. How do I want Part II to go? Should I write it in the same style as Part I? Or strike out down a new path? Take a shortcut? I have been sitting with this quantum uncertainty for the last month-plus. It has stopped me from really doing any work on the book at all.
But the last two days I have felt the call to press forward again. I have been rising early and spending some time transcribing my scrawling, crossed-out handwriting into my big Google Doc. (226 pages and counting.) I have 18 more handwritten pages left to type up. I’m cautiously hopeful that by the time I finish transcribing, I will have enough clarity on how to proceed that I can begin.
I like to believe that projects have rhythms, and sometimes you need to listen to your body and wait. In fact, I must believe this, otherwise I would exclusively feel jealousy at the 1000-words-a-day crowd and self-loathing at myself for failing to Churn It Out™. So much of the mental game of writing is coming up with excuses not to give up. One more piece of good news: in returning to the manuscript I found this:
